Shipley
Sandbox
LeedsMet
I've decided against using them for now. They feel a lazy solution, to what I'm trying to do. I want to have more control over the design of the interface of the site. There isn't any real effort in putting them together.
There are also practical concerns with them, the adverts can't be removed without payment. The numbers of users visiting the sites will increase bandwidth and costs. This would be a major problem with the Leeds Art College FD Photography site which is potentially going to have 80 students using it.
What I do like about Ning is the way it pulls together existing sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Blip etc and the Ning site is a way of grouping people and work from a range of of other sites in one space. That I think is interesting and an idea I want to work with. Ditch the idea of having a seperate gallery and simply run all the image uploading through Flickr, YouTube etc.
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